Somebody Is Cutting Internet Cables In California – NPR

The most recent occurred early Tuesday morning, reports The Wall Street Journal, hitting “several cables in Livermore, Calif., shortly before 4:30 a.m. Pacific time and hadn’t been repaired as of early Tuesday evening, according to several Internet service providers affected by the outage.”

The FBI has asked for the public’s help in finding those responsible for the attacks.

Fiber-optic cables are the backbone of high-speed Internet service, with each cable containing thousands of fibers that use light waves to transmit data.

In our interconnected world, a cut cable can have far-reaching consequences. The Journal reports that Microsoft experienced “a slowdown in its Azure cloud computing service in the western U.S linked to cut fiber” and that service providers reported disruptions as far north as Seattle.